About the Exhibit:
When a theater designer reads a play, the words of the script magically transform themselves into colors, shapes, lines, textures, images of light, personal memories and feelings, paint, and fabrics. But how? Is it magic and luck, or years of training, intuition, and imagination…or all of these things combined? A designer’s process is in the discovery of the who, what, where, how, and why that evolves out of a careful study of the script and a research process that inspires the final vision. Our goal is to move from the dramatic text to a theatrical event that drives the story and stirs the senses.
One of the misconceptions of theater artist work displayed as gallery art is considering all of the sketching, model construction, and rendering work that we do with pencil, pen, paper, paint, and glue as the finished artwork at all. These articles on display are merely the working ideas and the products of a concept or an approach to a play production. The finished artwork of a theater artist is ephemeral and is truly only experienced in the moment of performance with the audience present. The actual artwork has already come and gone, yet these artifacts remain.
Gregory Pulver has been practicing theater from his first community theater production at the age of five. He has a BA in Theater Performance and Dance and an MFA in Costume Design and Choreography. He has worked as a theater maker primarily in the west and Chicago. He was a professor at Western Washington University for 16 years and has been at UP for 7 years. He is a Resident Artist at Artist Repertory Theater where he designs costumes for several productions a year.
Larry Larsen has been involved in the theater since his on-stage appearance in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” in the 5th Grade. He has a BA in Drama and Business, and an MFA in Theatre Design. He has worked as a professional designer in the Pacific Northwest for 30 years and has designed for most of the professional theaters in Portland including ART, Broadway Rose, Third Rail Rep, Portland Revels, and PAC. He has taught at UP for 24 years and is an Academic Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences.
